The Game Within the Games
Kent State, which plays Division I-A football, averaged slightly more than 10,500 for six home games last season.
Ed Suba Jr./Akron Beacon Journal
Kent State, which plays Division I-A football, averaged slightly more than 10,500 for six home games last season.
By BILL PENNINGTON
Published: April 27, 2005
For more than 30 years, major college football teams have been labeled Division I-A by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, distinguishing them from Division I-AA teams, which play a lower-cost, and lower-profile, version of the game.
In time, exacting membership standards were established for universities to stay in Division I-A, including a requirement that every team average at least 15,000 in home attendance or be relegated to Division I-AA. At the end of last season, that regulation should have caused the expulsion of several universities that did not meet the attendance cutoff.
But at a meeting this week, the N.C.A.A. Division I board of directors will most likely save those programs by repealing or drastically modifying the requirement.
Talk of changing or eliminating the requirement has set in motion a series of related proposals to change other rules, including permitting more games between I-A and I-AA teams to count toward eligibility for bowl games and to do away with the designation I-AA.
These proposals, and a measure to allow a 12th regular-season game in college football, make up a weighty agenda for the Division I board of directors, who are to meet tomorrow in Indianapolis. "It could be a pretty energetic meeting," Robert Hemenway, the board chairman, said. "And I've learned not to predict how the board will act."
In the future, any of the 117 Division I-A teams with an attendance problem may simply be allowed to buy enough tickets to its own games - at a substantial discount - to reach the 15,000 minimum. It would not matter if anyone actually used a ticket to sit in a seat. The key statistic would be 15,000 in paid attendance.
"It's more than unseemly, it's dysfunctional," said Scott S. Cowen, the Tulane University president and a member of the Division I board of directors. "It could lead to a lot of unintended consequences, with schools doing things that are not in keeping with the spirit of college athletics."
Cowen supports eliminating the attendance requirement entirely.
Hemenway, president of the University of Kansas, said: "I think a lot of institutions view the attendance requirement as a pain in the neck. It's too hard to control with so many variables like the weather. And there is gamesmanship with the attendance figures now. A private donor can buy up all the tickets to the last home game just to make sure you're over the minimum."
Kent State, which plays Division I-A football, averaged slightly more than 10,500 for six home games last season. Carol A. Cartwright, the Kent State president, is on the Division I board of directors and has helped lead the discussion about altering the attendance requirement. Also on the 18-member board is Sidney McPhee, the president of Middle Tennessee State University, whose Division I-A football team drew fewer than 15,000 fans a game.
Cartwright said: "Some of us felt we were too vulnerable to something out of our control. Last year, we had some freakish weather on the day of two midseason home games, and our numbers went south after that. We can exercise control over every requirement to be in I-A, but it's unrealistic to think we can always manage our attendance. I'm delighted my colleagues on the board have listened."
Division I-A football universities are required to outspend their 122 I-AA counterparts in many ways, most prominently in the number of athletic scholarships that can be awarded (85 total in I-A, 63 in I-AA, although some I-AA programs, like those in the Ivy League, have none). The payoff for I-A institutions, in exposure by the news media and in possible multimillion dollar appearances in major bowl games, can be worth the investment, although an overwhelming majority loses money on football.
This has not stopped a significant number of universities from abandoning I-AA football for I-A in the last few years. Some leaders of I-AA conferences say the watering down or elimination of the attendance requirement would increase the migration to I-A and devalue I-AA football. So when the Division I board of directors first began talking about changing the attendance requirement in January, a caucus of commissioners from I-AA conferences persuaded the N.C.A.A. to propose a series of compromise measures meant to appease I-AA members.
Called the I-AA enhancements, these proposals are on tomorrow's agenda next to the modification of the attendance requirement. The first proposal calls for emergency N.C.A.A. legislation for the 2005 football season to allow I-A football teams to apply one victory each season against an I-AA team toward the six victories needed for eligibility to a bowl game.
The second proposal would allow one game against an I-AA team a season to count toward the N.C.A.A. minimum of five home games a season for I-A teams.
The third proposal would, in essence, do away with the I-A and I-AA designations. A Division I football program would instead be identified by whether it intends to go to a major bowl game or the 16-team playoff culminating in the I-AA national championship.
Precisely what the two new divisions would be called is uncertain.
"We just don't want to be called I-AA," said Doug Fullerton, commissioner of the Big Sky Conference, one of the top I-AA leagues in the nation. "Even though it only applies to football, I-A schools recruit against us and call our basketball teams and track teams I-AA programs. They're not, but people and recruits might understand that better if we had a new term that was football specific."
If the other proposals are approved, the I-AA institutions would benefit financially from playing more I-A football teams, because the I-A teams would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to I-AA teams to be visiting opponents. These are frequently lopsided games in favor of the home team, but the I-AA teams would get a featured appearance on a big stage - something useful in recruiting.
David Berst, the N.C.A.A. vice president for Division I and the staff liaison to the board, said he thought there was a consensus developing in the direction of approving each of the membership changes.
But interviews with several board members indicated divisions on the I-AA enhancements. On the proposal to do away with the name Division I-AA, Hemenway, the chairman, said, "I honestly don't think it'll happen."
Fullerton said if the I-AA proposals were not approved, I-AA universities might lead a revolt to override the board's decision, something virtually without precedent in the N.C.A.A.
Berst said that if 30 universities wanted to override a board decision, it would go back on the agenda for the next directors' meeting in August. If 100 member institutions want to override the decision, it is put on the convention agenda in January.
"I think we could win an override," Fullerton said. "We've got more than 100 I-AA schools, and I think some of the I-A's would come with us."
